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For a couple of weeks, I've been having kernel panics in my MacBook Pro (Early 2011, Yosemite), mostly doing zoom operations using QuickView and Preview.

A couple of times, it had problems rebooting, until finally it only rebooted to a grey screen.

I installed gfxCardStatus to prevent it to switching to the discrete GPU at any time, and things seemed to go smoothly for a couple of days. But one day it had a kernel panic when waking up from sleep.

Booting in verbose mode showed no indications of what the problem could be, but I suspected it was a video card issue. I've known that this model of MBP had problems with defective AMD Radeon discrete GPUs. I know Apples is repairing eligible machines, but I live in a country where perhaps that wouldn't be possible.

I decided to prevent the laptop from using the AMD GPU and use the integrated intel chip instead, I moved this drivers out of the /System/Library/Extensions/folder:

AMD2400Controller.kext
AMD2600Controller.kext
AMD3800Controller.kext
AMD4600Controller.kext
AMD4800Controller.kext
AMD5000Controller.kext
AMD6000Controller.kext
AMD7000Controller.kext
AMD8000Controller.kext
AMD9000Controller.kext
AMDFramebuffer.kext
AMDRadeonVADriver.bundle
AMDRadeonX3000.kext
AMDRadeonX3000GLDriver.bundle
AMDRadeonX4000.kext
AMDRadeonX4000GLDriver.bundle
AMDSupport.kext
ATIRadeonX2000.kext
ATIRadeonX2000GA.plugin
ATIRadeonX2000GLDriver.bundle
ATIRadeonX2000VADriver.bundle

It wouldn't boot up after that either, so I moved this ones also:

GeForce.kext
GeForceGA.plugin
GeForceGLDriver.bundle
GeForceTesla.kext
GeForceTeslaGLDriver.bundle
GeForceTeslaVADriver.bundle
GeForceVADriver.bundle

After that it did boot up, but the screen shows thin horizontal blue stripes all over as well as some other glitches and overall sluggishness.

Detail of stripes (there's some unavoidable Moire pattern in the photo, but the thin blue lines can be appreciated in the darker parts): enter image description here

I just want my Mac to use the integrated Intel GPU and forget the discrete ADM Radeon card altogether. Other machines, including Apple machines, don't have a discrete GPU, just an integrated one, and they work fine for day-to-day, non-graphic-intensive tasks

My question:

  • Is possible for this machine to work normally using only the integrated Intel GPU?
  • If so, how?
  • Are both my discrete GPU and my integrated GPU damaged?**
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2 Answers 2

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Just moving kext files won't disable your discrete graphics card, it will just make it work in a very basic mode.

You can achieve that modifying certain EFI variable. I answered this other question with the full procedure to permanently disable discrete graphics card on startup and have a fully functional machine.

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That seems not to be going well.

First check this out: http://www.apple.com/ca/support/macbookpro-videoissues/

Next I would suggest:

put all ATI/AMD drivers back to /System/Library/Extensions/

  • remove only and specifically the driver files that were being used for the specific GPU. In your case:

    sudo rm -r /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX3000*

  • sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions

  • reboot

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  • Do you mean AMDRadeonX3000* ?
    – Tulains Córdova
    Feb 28, 2015 at 1:30
  • I did this asyncro.com/2014/03/24/… and damaged the kernel cache, not it won't boot even in single user mode (command-s). What can I do now?
    – Tulains Córdova
    Feb 28, 2015 at 1:52
  • now you are a candidate for system restore :) cmd+r
    – Ruskes
    Feb 28, 2015 at 2:39
  • I'm out of luck. cmd+r boots into a grey screen (after a pin-striped Apple logo and about a third of progress bar)
    – Tulains Córdova
    Feb 28, 2015 at 3:41
  • do you have a bootable USB
    – Ruskes
    Feb 28, 2015 at 3:52

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